Discovering the Inherent Treasure of Life

You have to use your mind and spirit to feel the world, use your mind and spirit to feel life, use your mind and spirit to feel the inherent body of life. You must have a dialog with your own mind and spirit, and you must deduce the most simple truth from all the various apparent forms being born and being extinguished, just like the Buddha’s experience under the bodhi tree. Only if you do this, will you be able to discover the inherent treasure of life.

In my novel The Spells of Xixia, the protagonist Khyung is a very significant figure. What I was pointing out was that Khyung, who was an ascetic monk on a pilgrimage, was really also the guardian spirit in Desert Rituals who went to another village seeking his dream. He traveled very far, and broadened his knowledge by seeing many people and events, but he was not able to find the so-called holy land. Later he returned to the run-down Vajra house,and there he saw the seed mantra ofthe Vajra Yogini(one of the spirit totems of those who cultivate practice). At this point he understood that the place he had been seeking all along was his own home village.

For many years, I was traveling on a “pilgrimage,” and I did not care what temples I passed through. One year I visited almost all the temples on Mount Wu Tai, but I did not remember the name of a single one. All I could remember was that in the space of many months I peacefully traveled that “pilgrimage” route. In my mind the pilgrimage was not going to see some temple buildings or physical scenery, but was purely a matter of a yearning for and a reverence for a kind of spirit. All my pilgrimages were just to cleanse my own spirit, and make myself merge into one great energy and dissolve away “selfish clinging.”

In is not difficult to understand the meaning of the words of this statement in theory, but if you want to genuinely understand it, then you must look within, and focus on your own mind and spirit, and forget about everything the external world puts on you, including various forms of common sense, theory, knowledge, and experience, and even your physical body. You have to use your mind and spirit to feel the world, use your mind and spirit to feel life, use your mind and spirit to feel the inherent body of life. You must have a dialog with your own mind and spirit, and you must deduce the most simple truth from all the various apparent forms being born and being extinguished, just like the Buddha’s experience under the bodhi tree. Only if you do this, will you be able to discover the inherent treasure of life, and gain the wisdom of liberation.

Perhaps we should not say “gain,” because this wisdom does not depend on someone else bestowing it, nor is it a kind of discovery, nor is it something that exists apart from you – it is something that is inherently there. So let’s change how we describe it, and use the word “open” [rather than “gain”]: open the treasury of wisdom in your life, open the spiritual flower garden of your inner mind, open the secret code of happiness that is within you. We can also say “discover”: discover your inherent happiness, discover your inherent light of wisdom. People who cultivate practice work hard for years, but this is just to sweep the mind clean of the dirt that has accumulated over the years, and break the hard shell enclosing the mind and spirit. This lets their own minds become soft and supple, keen and sharp, and have a love that knows everything and tolerates everything but is not blind. This kind of love is founded on the basis of discovering inherent wisdom. The light of this inherent wisdom is the natural spontaneous wisdom of the inherent nature of mind. It is what Buddhists call “inherent original mind,” and it is also called the true mind. The true mind accompanies the inherent nature of the minds of sentient beings all along; there is no gap, and it cannot be interrupted. It’s just that many people cannot recognize it. When we recognize it, true mind appears. When we cannot recognize it, dark clouds block the sun, but we cannot say that then there is no sun. The sun exists all along; it’s just that the clouds of false mind cover the sun.

True mind is like the sun. Although it does not have the warmth of the sun, still, it can illuminate the dark night of a person’s mind and spirit, and enable people to bid farewell to all delusion and confusion, and clearly see the true characteristic of life, and find the direction for human life and the meaning of living. It is like opening a curtain and letting the bright sunshine enter into a dark room. The instant you illuminate mind and see its inherent nature, everything become pure and bright. Illuminating mind and seeing its inherent nature – this is enlightenment, this is recognizing true mind and seeing empty inherent nature.

When your mind and spirit become empty and pure and clear and bright, you will be absolutely unwilling to use thoughts to disturb it. You will savor it as if savoring a cup of fine pure tea. All the things which once made you pursue things like a hungry wolf pursuing its prey then all become dull and insipid, and you will not understand what you would endure so much pain and sufferingfor, why you pursed them oblivious of everything, but you won’t feel like thinking about the reasons anymore. You pursued them, okay, and then you gave them up, okay: whether you went wrong, or got it right, okay – it’s all gone. All you want is to savor this tranquility, all you want is to cherish all you have before your eyes, all you want to do is concentrate on each moment. This is because you clearly understand that all you can control is the present moment. Everything becomes simple, natural. Everything is like flowing water, continuously moving forward. Your thinking, your mind, will never again be imprisoned somewhere in the past. You will finally understand what is meant by “living in the here and now.” One of my students said to me that before, she had always felt that the territory of her life was very large, large enough to surround her: that was her world. But when she rode in an airplane, and she looked down and saw the lands and buildings looking so small, she discovered that the world was much more vast than she had imagined it. It included not only the city where she lived and the people around her, but also the whole universe, and countless living things. In fact, it is like this. Human beings are not the masters of the world and of the universe. All that one person can control is his or her own mind and spirit. One day you may truly become the master of your mind and spirit, and then the world in your mind will be totally transformed, and your feelings toward the world will be entirely different.

The true mind is something inherent in life, but not every person is able to recognize it. For people who are fully equipped with genuine faith, recognizing the true mind is as easy as turning over their hand. For people who do not have the mind of faith, recognizing the true mind is as difficult as climbing up into the sky. The most difficult part lies in its quality of “don’t speak, don’t speak – once you speak, you go wrong.” It is like love: only those who have genuinely been in love know what kind of feeling love is. When you stop all miscellaneous thoughts, and observe your own inherent mind, then you will discover that you mind is fundamentally a transparent crystal. This is a realm that cannot be described with something as pale and feebleas language. This is because, for people who have never tasted the finest Longjing tea, no description of Longjing tea can enable them to understand its flavor. This is why all I can do is guide you to discover the treasury of your inner mind – you yourself must make this journey of seeking it.

You may not like making this journey. You might feel as if you are traveling through an endless dark night, getting your fill of the torments of not knowing and being confused, not knowing whether the direction you are preceding along is correct or not, and not knowing when you will finally be able to get to the end of the dark night. You might not even know whether or not this dark night has an end. It might seem that in your world there is no daylight. In the dark night, you stumble along in one direction that may be correct, with the mud and gravel chafing your body, getting your body soaked in the muddy water from under the ground. You get very fatigued, but you do not want to give up: you go forward resolutely in your great yearning. You know that coming out of the dark night is the most important thing in your life. In this resolute certainty, there will suddenly appear a feeble bit of light, and in that instant, all your thoughts will dissolve away, and all that will be in your mind will be purity and joy. Your footsteps will finally have direction, and your mind will be filled with strength. You will be able to hear your heart beating strong and solid, and you will feel no more fear. You will have direction, and your mind will be filled with strength, and you may even be able to feel your strong heartbeat. You will know how to eliminate the damage caused by all barriers and defilements, and you will feel that this cannot be counted as damage. It’s like this: you know that the person you deeply love is beyond a forest of thorns, and to see her, you are willing to endure the pain of the thorns pricking you all over your body. That pain will all dissolve away, and everything that has happened will all become for you proof of the journey you made for love. During that painful struggle, your love and your mind and spirit, which had beenfragile and weak, have become stronger day by day, and in the end you cannot be bothered by external things. This process is truly filled with a moving poetic quality.